


carried on the breeze

by notavodkashot



Series: Chronicles of the Storm King's Reign [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Dad!Cor, Galahd-centric, Galahdian!Ardyn, M/M, Multi, Not so much redemption as recalibration, Occasional Politics and fits of petty cruelty, Terrible assholes being terrible at each other, almost kinda dad!Nyx, never ever absolutely not dad!Ardyn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2019-05-24 07:42:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 27
Words: 10,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14950476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/pseuds/notavodkashot
Summary: A collection of short fics from my tumblr prompt drives, all set within theChronicles of the Storm King's Reigncontinuity.





	1. ardyn staking claim on nyx, after the crowning

“Will you feel better if you kill me?” Ardyn asks him, quiet, pleasant, he’s such a strange accent, Nyx thinks, rolling vowels flowing between his lips, consonants caught on his teeth, like fish in the webs left by the reeds, and he feels small and desperate, standing there, close enough to smell him - he smells of rain and thunder, but aged, old, ancient, he smells of Galahd before it had time to settle, like winestained barrels used once, only - and he should smell foul, should taste terrible, that is after all what the taint is about, what the scourge carries in its wake, and still…

Still.

“Yes,” Nyx says, hoarse, eyes wide, and Ardyn nods at him, once, thoughtful, presses the kukri into his hand, fingers wrapped loose around his and guides the strike, but lets Nyx’s strength determine the depth.

Ardyn falls, body heavy enough to carry the inertia of that hit, but the blade stays in Nyx’s hand, tip trembling as he watches blood ooze black and putrid and still without the stench, he keeps thinking there should be a stench, like a fresh body when it drops and the bowels loosen and it’s all shit and piss and blood making mud under his feet. But then the blood boils over, bubbling and shifting and slithering back under his skin. Nyx drops the blade, hears it clatter on the ground but it doesn’t matter, he’s moving already, sitting astride the King’s hips, fingers tearing at the senseless, ludicrous collection of layers he insists on wrapping around himself, trying to find, to reach-

Skin, pale, freshly knit back together, warm under his fingers and the echo of a heartbeat deeper still.

“I must admit most people invite me dinner first, before they take liberties with me,” Ardyn muses, eyes bright and taunting, warm brown like the warm dirt in the hills, hiding beneath the grass. “Are you satisfied?”

Nyx stares down at him, stares and stares, one hand rubbing back and forth, along the dip of his sternum, along the raise of muscle, not quite reaching the nipple, where there should be a scar or a wound or the impression of something other than unmarred, pale skin, because he struck true, practiced, single stroke between the ribs, aiming for the heart.

The heart beating steadily, lazily, almost like it doesn’t have to but does for some reason.

“Is this for my satisfaction?” Nyx asks, willing his hand to stop. Stop. Stop touching, stop testing the soft skin against the thick callouses on his fingers, from years of playing games with knives and learning how best sink them into a man’s heart.

“My dear, do you suppose I let any fool walk up to me and stab me?” Ardyn asks back, head tilted, lips twitching, and he’s infuriating, and he knows it, and Nyx digs his nails into his skin, on reflex, even though he probably shouldn’t. “Let them feel me up too, after they’re done?”

“Why not?” Nyx retorts, licking his lips, willing himself to stand and finding a hand hooked on his belt when he tries, anchoring him right where he is. “You’re immortal.”

Immortal.

The Immortal Accursed, even, if you believe in that kind of thing. And Nyx never has, really, never saw the point of it, but right now Ardyn is sitting up, and now Nyx is sitting on his thighs, and he’s solid beneath him, solid and warm and full of miasma and black, oozing blood apparently, if you stab him right.

“Exactly that,” Ardyn replies, stealing the air from Nyx’s breathing to fuel his own, they are so close, “it’s a privilege, dear. It’s not given freely, and it’s not very cheap.”

Nyx swallows hard.

“My life?”

Ardyn licks his lips, just barely missing licking Nyx’s in the process.

“Of service, yes,” he says, and his thumb fiddles with Nyx’s beltbuckle, taunting, “a King needs a General, after all.” He drops his eyes, to better see what hands are doing, to see Nyx’s hands give up pretenses and show him exactly how to make it come undone. “Mmm, sometimes more.”

“Sometimes,” Nyx laughs, hoarse, eyes wide, lungs burning and empty.

“Wouldn’t want to be a bore, is all.”

Boredom, Nyx thinks, is the least of his problems right now, possibly for the rest of his life.


	2. cor's arrival to galahd, first meetings

Cor recognizes warping when he sees it, recognizes the faint ozone smell that follows after it, like air boiling in the wake of it, has seen ghosts of mid steps left behind for many years.

But they were blue, the ones he knows, and these… these are not.

“You’re very far away from home, Marshal,” the owner of those twisted after images says, taunting, circling. “You should go back to Lucis, while you still can.”

“Galahd is part of Lucis,” Cor replies, grunts and digs his heels on the wet grass, trying to find purchase in it, as he twists the sword to block the strike.

“Not anymore,” Nyx whispers, blue eyes dark, narrowed, and dissolves into faint reddish pink light, when Cor turns the block into a swing, aiming to slice him in half.

It’s maybe half an hour later, after trying and failing to score a hit that lingers, that Cor hears rustling in the edges of the clearing, distinct from Nyx’s position behind him - he always warps behind him, and Cor would point out how predictable that is, if it weren’t also very efficient and remarkably hard to block or dodge - and a new figure walks into view.

“Tsk, Commander, you’re being woefully rude,” the stranger says, walking with a tilt to his hips, like a ship swaying in the waves, each step heavy and light at once. “We so rarely have guests, too.”

“Thought you  _liked_ me ‘cause I’m rude,” Nyx says, standing up from a crouch, weapons lowered but not put away, “Your Majesty.”

“Among other things, yes,” Ardyn sighs, smile vague and disinterested as he studies Cor and the fact Nyx clearly has failed to land a single strike on him. “But we must, on occasion be gracious, too.”

“Why?” Cor asks, just as Nyx snorts, and Ardyn smiles.

All smiles, him, always.

“Why, because it’d be so very boring, otherwise… and it’s not every day the very Marshal of the Crownsguard comes visit, we wouldn’t want to be unwelcoming.”

Nyx looks at Cor like he’d rather very much be unwelcoming, really, but instead he snorts and pointedly lets the kukris fall from his grip, vanish into nothing but sparkling little crystals, much like Cor’s sword does. But his are a different color, tinted - tainted - a different hue.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Nyx says, circling around Cor to go stand beside his King, “of course.”


	3. ardyn is suitably irritated to realize crucial traditions have been lost

“Do you still pray, before you start building?” Ardyn asks, arms folded, beneath his chin, eyes half-lidded as he studies the map displayed on the tablet, fingers zooming in and out, almost whimsically.

“…not really,” Nyx replies, trailing his fingers along his spine, following the shadows shifting just barely under his skin. “I mean it’s… it’s pretty dang obvious when you should stop, honestly.”

He used to think that was weird. He still thinks it’s weird. The shadows and the occasional bursts of black ooze and the tiny little things that are… off, about Ardyn. Nyx focuses on each one at the time, tests the boundaries, tries to figure out which one of them will kill him - none so far - and then he moves onto the next.

It’s fine.

Ardyn turns under his hand, and Nyx blinks, following along the line of sinew and muscle twisting under his skin, to find the King staring blankly at him.

“What.”

“You don’t ask Him before you start to build,” Ardyn repeats, squinting.

Nyx blinks.

“Well, if He minds, He’s not shy to let us know,” he replies, shrugging. He blinks when a hand reaches for his face, nails gracing his cheeks, not digging, just reminding him they could, and then Ardyn’s fingers reached his hair and tugged him closer. “Old Man isn’t one to mince words. Or spare the lightning, either.”

“So pretty,” Ardyn sighs, expression long suffering, “and so fucking  _stupid_.” Nyx blinks. Ardyn snarls, and there it is, just for a moment there, that shadow of the scourge, boiling to the surface, because he’s annoyed, now. Rather than strike, though, he pats Nyx’s cheek, gesture mocking rather than affectionate, as he slides off the bed. “Come along, now.”

“What,  _now_?”

“Unless you’ve been so thoroughly debauched you cannot walk anymore,” Ardyn pointed out dryly, “which you  _haven’t_ been, trust me.”


	4. ardyn dropping a bombshell on cor

Names are important, his was once the most important of them all. Still is, in a way.

Which would be why Ardyn wouldn’t give it up, not until he’s feeling safe and content and at home, and Cor insults him by implying he’s below or lesser than his King.

And Ardyn has… has forgotten what it feels like, to be told he’s lesser than the Crystal Kings, since he arrived here and he became King of the Storm, instead. He likes the Storm and the Storm… tolerates him (likes him) a lot more than he’d have expected.

But then Cor taunts him, ironically without meaning to. He asks the question and he means it without any disrespect, it’s not an insult just a given and Ardyn is home and safe and the storm is raging outside.

It must have shown in his face.

Must have.

Nyx is holding his hand under the table, wide, callous fingers sneaking their way in between his own, because Nyx is silly like that, liking to pretend Ardyn is a thing that could be stopped by something like that. That out there in the world exists something that could bring him to a cold dead stop the same way he did to the Empire and their forces.

“Oh?” Ardyn says, smiling wide, sharp, vicious, and Nyx’s grip turns punishingly tight around his hand, fingers creaking under the vice and if his bones could still snap they would, he’s sure, but it doesn’t matter, because: “Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?” Cor asks, frowning - Cor is always frowning, Ardyn finds it fascinating, really.

“My full name,” Ardyn says, and Nyx’s hand goes slack against his in surprise, “the proper one, you understand.” Ardyn takes a sip of his drink, nothing more than wetting his lips. “Ardyn Lucis Caelum is my proper name.”

Whatever happens, Ardyn tells himself, happens.


	5. neither ardyn nor nyx signed up for actual feelings

“Will you feel better if you kill me?” Ardyn asks, abruptly, like he just stumbled upon the idea and didn’t spare a moment to think it through before he forced it out of his mouth.

“What?” Nyx startles, and then gives him a horrified look. “ _No!_ ”

“It used to make you feel better,” Ardyn mutters, frowning, annoyed that his suggestion has misfired and annoyed that he cares that his suggestion has misfired. “Would that I could keep the scars of your fits, my dear, I’d look like a lovely stripped coeurl.”

“Shut up, Ardyn,” Nyx groans, but rather than roll away and out of the bed, he moves closer, like he’s trying to crawl under his skin. “You don’t need any more scars. Or deaths.”

“They matter so little to me, and oh so much to you,” Ardyn replies, grinning, taunting, and it falls flat, flat, flat, because Nyx buries his face into the crook of his neck and refuses to take the bait. “Nyx.”

“Shut  _up_ , Ardyn.”

And because he doesn’t know what else to do, Ardyn does.


	6. they mostly keep cor around because he's a surprisingly effective good influence on (everyone) ardyn

Cor convinces Ardyn to release the curse on Gilgamesh. He doesn’t ask him to do it, because of course he doesn't. He never asks for anything and yet always ends up getting exactly what he wants. Nyx hates and admires that talent of his, to play the King to his tune and have him... not mind enough to put an end to it.

Cor convinces Ardyn to release the curse on Gilgamesh, even if he's horrified when he learns the full story - Ardyn's side of the story. He's bound to the Blademaster, in that weird, passive way that makes him able to orient himself because he knows exactly where the Crag is, at any moment. Gilgamesh has been his North for years, but it weighs on him, the knowledge. The source of it.

(He wonders, sometimes, late at night when he can't sleep and he slides into the hammock by the balcony, staring at the naked sky, if that connection to Gilgamesh wasn't alos a roundabout connection to Ardyn, a way to explain why he's so at home within the walls of the Seat, so at ease in the presence of a monster of Ardyn's caliber.)

He doesn't ask him to, doesn't have to. Leaves it hanging, years on years, scars on scars, and perhaps it is a testament to how much the scourge has waned or how much the crown has changed him, but Ardyn relents, one day. For no other reason than he can, that he knows Cor wants him to - he never asked, but he's insidious that way, Cor - and he will not forgive the wound - it was such a grievous wound - but he'll... relent.

Two thousands years on, and he'll finally relent, let that last knot of anger unravel in his gut.

“Thank you,” Cor whispers, feeling in his bones the shackles loosen, and across the world the Crag collapses on itself, the magic and the hate that kept it whole finally releasing its hold on it, letting time pass through and drag it all along the current like it should have been, oh so long ago.

“I didn’t do it for _you_ ,” Ardyn snarls, ooze and scourge, taint and rage, and he regrets it already, regrets the heady, foreign concept of release, because that too was a burden he carried and didn’t even remember piling on his shoulders.

“I know,” Cor replies, smiles, and maybe he gets it, why Nyx can face this - anger and hatred and the very real threat of the scourge, because Ardyn really is thirty million daemons in a trenchcoat, even if they almost forget it most of the time - and not be afraid.


	7. that one time caligo uldor survived galahd

Caligo Ulldor jumps at the call to try and take Ardyn’s place in the Empire.

Caligo, selfish, pompous, arrogant asshole that he is, declares to the Emperor that he’s going to burn Galahd to the ground and bring him back Ardyn in chains, to prove  _his_ loyalty.

Caligo on that shore, inside his gaudy golden mech, talking bombastic, self-aggrandizing bullshit.

“Leave him for last,” Ardyn says, and then unleashes the full of his Kingsglaive on the disorganized mess of an army Caligo brought with him.

Because here’s the thing about MTs. Here’s the truth Ardyn never bothered to _explain_. You can program them to fight. You can make them inordinately powerful. You can harvest them in the thousands.

But they’re still barely pawns in the field, only as powerful as the hand that commands them across the board.

Caligo is very good at chess, but Ardyn is a master of checkers.

And down go Caligo’s toy soldiers, pawns and rooks and knights and bishops, one after the other.

Then Ardyn does Caligo the greatest cruelty he can think of: he sends him home, alive, mostly unharmed and soundly defeated. Nyx comments on that sudden burst of mercy, so uncharacteristic of Ardyn, particularly Ardyn at war.

“Oh, you only call it mercy, love, because you’ve never seen Iedolas vent his disappointment.”


	8. the REAL reason Ardyn came up with the idea of the Kingsglaive

He’s not sure why he expected to go out there and fight alone, when the next wave of retaliation from the Empire crashed upon Galahd. He doesn’t get to hog the glory and the fun, and so of course they go out there, and he tells himself he doesn’t care - he doesn’t, not exactly - but he’s… he’s  _distracted_. They’re getting in the way and they keep laughing at him when he tells them to go home, to leave him alone, because there’s retribution in the air and they want some of that. They want a chance to be the Storm, for once.

Someone jokes -  _jokes_ , he’s delighted before he remembers he’s annoyed by all of them - that magic is cheating and they’re not counting magical deaths for the tally. They have a tally, whoever kills the most gets free beer when they go home but only if they don’t cheat with magic. He still gets free beer, anyway, because he can’t get drunk on it and Libertus has taken it as personal fucking challenge to figure out how to fix that.

He could fight so much effectively, on his own. It’s not that he cares, about cutting them down while he swings his scythe, reaping chirring, flailing MTs like ripe wheat. But  _they keep talking to him_. They keep acknowledging the fact he’s there. They scurry about, doing their best even if their best isn’t particularly impressive, even if their best is dwarfed hilariously by a careless swipe of his hand and his armiger hammering against his enemies.

When they vote him King - they  _vote_  him King, him, and the whole thing is so fucking ridiculous he can’t help but go along for shits and giggles - he tests his supposed new authority by ordering them to stay back. They laugh and argue they can’t. They so rarely have a King, they must take pains to make sure he’s not harmed. He argues he can’t be harmed. They proclaim quite cheerfully how much they don’t care.

And then, a thought occurs to him.

It’s a terrible thought, not just by virtue of being his.

Clearly, he has to try and put it into action.


	9. to the surprise of absolutely NO ONE, Ardyn did not think this through

Nyx calls him twenty million daemons in a trenchcoat, though he sounds almost fond of him, these days, when he brings it up.

He’s wrong, though Ardyn doesn’t feel like pointing out the estimate is woefully low. He’s so much  _more_ than twenty million daemons in a trenchcoat - and it’s  _not_ a trenchcoat, thank you very much, it’s a long coat, entirely different thing - and he’s been for so long he really can’t hear the screams unless he really tries.

The weird thing, though.

The weird thing is that he can hear  _them_. The Glaives, loud and obnoxious and terribly lewd as they go along their days. He can hear Nyx and Pelna and Crowe, Sonitus and Luche, not words but… echoes. It nags at him, when he’s not thinking about it. It’s an irksome little itch, like a pair of new boots that fit fine but not  _fine_ , because they haven’t been broken in properly.

And then, beneath that, a tiny little hum from all the others. They’re functionally useless, really, so far disconnected from him to even really scratch the surface of the pool of magic boiling under his skin. But he can  _feel_ them.

Like pegs nailed into the ground, magic wrapped like rope around them, knotted tight to hold him in place. He fantasizes sometimes, of tearing himself free, like a tent torn into the sky by a strong gale. He imagines the ropes unraveling, magic spiraling out of control, or maybe corroded by the scourge into thin, weak strands that can’t hope to remain.

He tells himself it’s not captivity, when he’s feeling contrary, which is always, if he’s willingly put on the shackles, if he has no desire to leave. A prison, after all, is little more than a fortress looked at from the wrong angle.


	10. Ardyn tries to manipulate Cor for his own gain and it... works? Sort of? It'll have consequences, either way.

“You’re letting him go,” Nyx said, frowning, as he watched with glowing pinkish red eyes as Cor scurried out through the streets, towards the harbor.

“Yes,” Ardyn replied, eyebrows arched, “I couldn’t very well keep him chained here. He’s a free range murderer you see, you need to give them the impression that they’re free, every now and then, or they get antsy.”

“Or you could’ve let me kill him,” Nyx pointed out, looking up at his King and waiting until he knew those golden-brown eyes were on him, before he rolled his own with a flourish. “Y’know, like I’ve been asking, since he got here? That’s a thing too.”

“In all fairness, you’d try, I’m sure,” Ardyn said, lips twitching as Nyx glared at him, “but I’m not sure you’d get very far. He  _is_ an immortal of sorts, after all.”

“So are you,” Nyx grumped, baring his teeth with a hiss when Ardyn dipped a hand into his hair, tilting his head so he could lean in and press a mocking kiss to the corner of his jaw. “Killed you plenty of times, regardless.”

“Yes, darling, but I take stabbing as good natured foreplay, he takes it as an invitation to stab back,” Ardyn deadpanned, and then sank his teeth into Nyx’s neck, purely for the pleasure to make Nyx swear murder at him for it. “Alas,  _you_  happen to not be immortal. Stabbing would  _not_ end well.”

“So is letting him go,” Nyx insisted, refusing to be distracted from the problem at hand, which was that Ardyn had just let Cor go. Just like that. Despite the fact he’d bluntly owned up to his status as a spy from Insomnia within the first ten minutes of his meeting with Ardyn. “I can still kill him before he leaves, if you let me go now.”

“Oh, none of that, Nyx,” Ardyn said, reproachful, like killing was a scandalous thing to contemplate, because he was an asshole like that. “He’s going to do us a favor, after all.”

“Right,” Nyx said, giving Ardyn a dubious look for his trouble, “of course he is.”

“I mean, he’s not going to do it on purpose,” Ardyn acknowledged, chuckling, “but you have to understand, he’s a good man. Good men rarely allow themselves the luxury of letting injustice happen, when they’re perfectly capable of preventing it. And oh, where he’s going, most good men would willingly learn to kill just to make it stop. Good thing he’s already so very good at killing, as is.”

Nyx gave Ardyn a squinting look.

“Where exactly did you send him?”

Ardyn shrugged and took off his hat, placing it square on Nyx’s head in a way that covered his eyes.

“I didn’t  _send_ him anywhere, I merely gave him answers he desperately didn’t know he shouldn’t have,” Ardyn explained candidly, and leaned in to smirk in the face of Nyx’s unamused look, after enduring so called hat abuse. “I did, however, ask him to pass on my regards to an old friend of mine. Him and his… exceedingly numerous family. But he’s by no means  _obliged_ to do it.”

“Still say you should’ve let me shiv him in his sleep and call it a day,” Nyx muttered sullenly, and then hissed again when Ardyn pulled him along, tugging on an arm hard enough it felt like he was trying to snap it out of its socket, away from the window and back to his room. “Hey!”

“You’re being murderous, Commander, it’s my duty as your King to pacify you, isn’t it?” Ardyn said, in that godawful taunting tone of his, the kind that was overdone and purring, but went right past the mark and into outright cheesy.

Nyx gave him a dry look.

“What, with your dick?”

Ardyn laughed, because of course he did.

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll get to that, eventually, but I do know how much you value creativity.”

Nyx made an unconvinced noise in the back of his throat, but he forgot all about Cor the Immortal and his mystery errand, by the time they did get to Ardyn’s dick and what exactly he wanted to do with it.

In fact, he wallowed in blissful forgetfulness all the way until Cor came back, seven months later, with an unkempt, messy beard on his face, a haunted, hunted look in his eyes, and a small, fussy toddler in his arms.

“Besithia is dead,” Cor deadpanned, staring up at Ardyn with a delicate mixture of murderous outrage and skittish, borderline respect. “They’re all dead.”

“Well, not  _all_ of them,” Ardyn replied, arching an eyebrow at the small child casually chewing on the lapels of Cor’s dirty, frayed jacket. “Clearly.”

Cor stared and stared, and then he said:

“Fuck off, Your Majesty.”

Ardyn burst out laughing at the deadpan, and Nyx knew he’d not be allowed to kill the fucker. Not yet anyway.

Dammit.


	11. one of these days, Ardyn is going to eat the fucking kid

“Blue!” Prompto shrieked furiously, banging two brightly yellow blocks together.

“I admire your determination,” Ardyn deadpanned, sneering down at the baby, while, in all likelihood, ignoring the fact he was sitting in an exact mirror to the boy. “But I weep at your grasp on the subtle nuances of color.”

“Blue!” Prompto insisted.

“Yellow, actually,” Ardyn sighed, and reached a hand to take the goddamn noise makers out of those tiny, evil fingers.

Prompto reacted in the most rational way a small two year old boy could:

“BLUE!” He bellowed, and threw both cubes straight at Ardyn’s face.

Ardyn reacted in the most rational way a two-millennia collection of daemons in a trenchcoat could:

“Oh, we’re being rude now,” he snarled, scourge marks oozing black ichor down his eyes and his nose, as he leaned in threateningly, “are we?”

Prompto giggled like this was the most hilarious, entertaining thing he’d ever seen. Which, admittedly, it probably was.

“Okay! Play time’s over!” Nyx announced, swooping in to pick up the boy before Ardyn could claw him into nice bite-sized cubes with his bare hands.

“ _Nyx_ ,” Ardyn began, warningly, when Prompto grabbed onto Nyx’s braids with strength that belied his size and laughed like he was having the time of his life.

“ _You_ have a fucking country to rule,” Nyx snarled at his King, utterly unmoved by the scourge and the snarl and the fact Ardyn’s eyes were doing the creepy golden daemon glowy thing. He looked down at Prompto, who, of course, had already stuffed the braid into his mouth, chewing on it with a fucking delighted look on his face. “And  _you_ have a nap to take.”

And, of course, Nyx had a fucking Immortal to track down and yell at about his shitty kid and his even shittier parenting skills.

One day Nyx was going to let Ardyn eat the fucking kid. Like, literally for realsies.

That’d show Cor.

…Bastard.


	12. for once, it was Cor who didn't think this through

The thing is, Cor knew they had the home advantage, in Galahd. Monica did her homework, before she let him set out to objectively one of the most dangerous places in the world, not just Lucis. Galahd is well known as a death trap, which is also why Galahd has never really been important, in the political sense, before. No one wants anything to do with the Archipelago, and after so many attempts to “civilize” it have ended in massive, disastrous tragedy, the world as a whole seemed to have decided that no matter what resources Galahd had, they just weren’t worth the effort of trying to get them.

And then it decided it wanted to matter politically and got a King.

Cor was expecting them to be vicious and feral and terrible, and they’d been, this so called Kingsglaive that wielded the power of their King, not unlike how Cor wields the power of his own.

But they’re in his home turf now, in Cleigne, in land he knows like the back of his hand. He’s supposed to have the home advantage now, and it doesn’t feel that way. There’s something eerily similar, in how MT eyes glow in the dark, red and threatening, and how the Kingsglaive’s eyes glimmer pinkish red when they’re gearing up for combat.

And Cor knows, he knows, it was his idea.

He engineered this, this… joint venture between the Kingsglaive and the Crownsguard to root out the Empire from Cleigne and buy them some time to… not be at peace, but at least figure out boundaries. To not start another war before they’re done fighting the one they already have. It was his idea. He’s the one who taunted Ardyn into agreeing.

But still.

The Kingsglaive doesn’t have the home advantage, now, but their eyes glow and their strikes are true. Cor keeps to the edges, to his men, to make sure they don’t give into the urge to switch targets when they run out of MTs to kill.

It’s near midnight, when he sees them, in the distance, and he feels the twitch of something familiar crawling down his spine: the golden eyes of the Storm King and the infernal whistling tune of his, as he waltz into the battlefield without a care.

“Well, you were taking so long,” Ardyn tells Cor, eyes golden-cursed and bits of scourge crawling under his skin, “I got bored, you see. Simply had to see what all the fuss was about.”

This is entirely Cor’s doing, yes, but Cor’s keenly reminded he hasn’t had a good idea in fifteen years and change.


	13. Nyx knows he doesn't understand the King he serves... but he's getting there

Some of it, Nyx knows, is purposefully for show. Ardyn is a dedicated conman who enjoyed his show-stopping flourishes like nothing else. He brandished the crown and the scourge equally and without regard for consequences (that’s a lie and he knows it, Ardyn knows the consequences of his actions and he measures them with infinite precision in fact) just for the sake of the reactions he got to them. They were a language on their own, accents and glottal stops, punctuation of the screams that sometimes lived inside the King’s head.

But sometimes… sometimes Ardyn is alone, or as alone as he can be, with Nyx sprawled by his side, entertained by breathing and not thinking much about anything in particular. And sometimes, Ardyn’s eyes bleed gold and his pupils slit like a coeurl’s.

He can’t know what thoughts live inside his king’s head. He suspects not even the King has that privilege most of the time. But he can put new ones in, or nudge them along somewhere nicer, somewhere less vicious.

And if that place usually ends with Ardyn’s hands on his skin, nails digging into his hips and making breath stutter into his lungs?

Nyx is willing to make that sacrifice.


	14. Shiva makes a sincere attempt to stop Ardyn from receiving the Thunder Crown

“Don’t look,” Nyx whispered, mixing the blood and the scourge-like ooze into the ink pot, steadily following his own advice.

“I’m not a child,” Ardyn hissed, staring at the ground, back bowed forward, shadows writhing under his skin already. “Of course I know not to look.”

“Knowing what you should do, and actually doing it, are two very different things,” Nyx replied, letting the bowl sit with the other four - the ink was gleaming, now, golden-red and purplish-blue and vice versa, reddish-gold and blueish-purple, and that’s how you knew it was ready, or so he’d been told, no one had ever done a crown on a walking scourge monstrosity, nevermind actually mixing the scourge into it, so this was going to go either great or terrible with little to no in between. “And you’ve proven time and time again that you don’t give a shit about that difference, either.”

They weren’t looking at it, very studiously not letting their eyes wander up to the storm raging all around and yet somehow avoiding both of them - because the ink ran with water and if it went well, if it went the way it had to, then the rain would only close in on them once it was time to wash it all away.

They weren’t looking, but they felt the crash of frost trying to disrupt the storm.

“Ah,” Ardyn said, “of course.”

“Shut up,” Nyx snarled, and poked at the center of his spine with the butt of the small, sturdy bamboo hammer in his left hand. “Don’t look.”

“You don’t really think this will work, surely,” Ardyn said, and then hissed when Nyx’s left hand closed on his shoulder and shoved him back down, before he could throw himself back to his feet. “Honestly, I-”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Nyx hissed and tugged him sharply until he was looking at him. “It’s probably going to go to shit, you dumbfuck trenchcoat full of daemons. But if it goes to shit, it shouldn’t be because you were too fucking scared to let it happen.”

The scourge oozed, right on cue. Nyx used to be unnerved by that. And before being unnerved, he used to be terrified. He supposed the time for that had passed already.

“Sit the fuck down,” Nyx said, reaching a hand to hold Ardyn’s face, feeling the icy touch of the black ichor dripping down Ardyn’s pores and refusing to think too hard about it, “and shut the fuck up. I barely know what I’m doing, stop distracting me before I forget.”

“This will end in tragedy,” Ardyn mused, seemingly unmoved by the caress - but moved enough not to tear Nyx’s hand off his wrist for the insolence, after all - and then slumped back down, eyes carefully - not respectfully, but this was Ardyn, it was as close as they were going to get - fixed on the ground. “On your head be it.”

“I mean, probably,” Nyx agreed with a snort and dipped the needle - bone of some kind that Nyx was probably better off not knowing the source - into the first bowl of ink-blood-scourge. “But imagine the look on their faces, if it doesn’t.”


	15. of course the one time Cor is having a good day, Regis and Clarus drop by for a visit

Cor was having a good day. He was relishing in it intensely, considering those didn’t come by often. 

(Here, it would be prudent to explain what Cor Leonis, Immortal of the Crownsguard, Un-Immortal of the Kingsglaive, Official Ambassador for Lucis and Unofficial Court Jester for Galahd, considered a good day: A day he was not threatened with bodily violence or had to return it in kind, a day the Storm King was not bored, a day the Crownforger [read: The Storm Queen] didn’t pick a fight, and in general a day he didn’t have to fish out his son from the jaws of whatever piece of fucking fauna he’d decided to befriend by crawling into its mouth. They were surprisingly rare and far in between, not the least because Axis always had new ideas to figure out the limits of his Immortal moniker, Ardyn was always bored, Nyx was always down for some friendly not-murdering, and Prompto could not see anything alive, no matter how dreadful, how dangerous, how deadly, poisonous, vicious or all of the above [this was, after all, Galahd, where the national animal was a fucking coeurl variant that made the ones back home look like puny well-behaved kittens on a good day], and not want to cuddle its face. Cor enjoyed his good days whenever he got them the only way he knew how, thrown on a hammock in the balcony overlooking the river, with a good book, copious amounts of alcohol and Aulea’s latest letter detailing the absolute wreck that was Regis’ court and how close she was to actually murdering someone, possibly Regis himself.)

“Nephew!” Ardyn cried out, somewhere twenty stories below Cor, in the main atrium of the ludicrous ruin - well, it was a ruin, by Solheim standards, Cor found that he was warming up to it, the more time he spent in it; there was a unique charm to the fact the old fortifications seemed half devoured by the forest around  them, which was weirdly Galahdian in ways Cor wasn’t sure he could explain with actual words - that served as Ardyn’s Seat.

It took Cor a moment to realize why this was upsetting at all.

“You!” Nyx said, warping up into the balcony just as Cor’s brain escaped the haze he’d been enjoying and he choked on air, his tongue and a blueberry, just as he scrambled ungracefully out of his perch.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Cor said, tumbling out into Nyx’s arms, which was only made worse by the fact they were warping twenty stories down two seconds later. “The hell are you  _doing_ here?” He demanded, storming up to see Regis and Clarus flanked by the Kingsglaive, maybe some twenty feet away from Ardyn.

“Oh, we don’t speak to guest like  _that_ , Marshal,” Ardyn said, before Regis could figure out what to reply. “That’s  _rude_.”

Cor considered telling Ardyn to eat his entire ass, and then remembered it was a coin toss whether he actually would - and a further coin toss whether it’d be the  _fun_ kind or not - and thus he refrained.

“Guests, right,” Nyx pointed out, quick on his feet and forever more willing to try and game Ardyn’s moods, even if he lacked Cor’s knack to actually change those moods to suit his liking. “Who we don’t murder,” he added, a bit too significantly to be subtle, but then the Kingsglaive was not very subtle by nature, “because that’d be  _just_ as rude.”

“Well, not unless they deserve it, of course,” Ardyn retorted, smile sly and calculating, like the great big snakes Cor had once been hired to hunt somewhere near the Vesperpool. “Hospitality, like my patience, does have limits.”

“I’m…” Regis began, frowning, “…not sure, actually. What we’re doing here, I mean.” He spied a look at Clarus, whose expression was not so much pinched, as a pincushion given face. “Or how, for that matter.”

Ardyn smiled. Nyx and Cor shared a solemn look, because it was one of those smiles.

“Capricious, isn’t it,” Ardyn said, not oblivious but uncaring of what his pets were plotting, stepping closer to the King of Insomnia - hard to say of Lucis when most of it was still flying Imperial banners or, well, his own - with that swaying motion of his, like a heavy boat riding waves in a storm. “Your Crystal.”


	16. Cor's thoughts as he watches the Kingsglaive fight alongside the Crownsguard

They’re a disorganized mess, is the thing.

Cor is used to it - Cor refuses to admit he is a disorganized mess compressed into a single person - so he doesn’t mind. He’s used to Nyx taunting the shit out of him every hour of the day, warping behind him and tempting him to smash his smug idiot face with the pommel of his sword, so seeing streaks of pinkish red light everywhere is not at all startling.

Over all, yes, the Kingsglaive puts up quite the spectacle when they join the battlefield, and it’s the kind of spectacle that hammers the competition into a fine paste while they’re at it, but Cor’s not exactly impressed.

(Cor’s seen Ardyn, so called Storm King, lightning and scourge boiling under his skin, hollering at the sky and he’s not quite sure he’s ever going to see anything that tops  _that_.)

But the rest of the Crownsguard is clearly not as desensitized as he is, and they clearly find the spectacle much more intimidating. Cor supposes he might as well show off a little, if nothing else to help with morale.

The battle ends rather abruptly after that.


	17. Cor's arrival to Galahd was... picturesque to say the least.

The Storm had been exactly as vicious and unrelenting as the stories said it would be. Cor was tired and sore and wet and annoyed, and then he discovered lightning could be dodged. He hadn’t meant to. But he’d felt the brush of lightning and rather than flinch he tried to dodge.

He dodged.

And he noticed, either because he was tired or he was delirious or he was feverish from a near capsized ride to get here in the first place, that the lightning started dodging back. Which… That wasn’t possible. That wasn’t how lightning  _worked_.

And yet.

The deer reminded Cor of the armored tank-like trucks the Nifs used to ferry their officers between bases: big, lean, mean and willing to charge head on, no matter what.

Scraps of documents salvaged from the Royal Library stated one of the key components of the agreements between Lucis and Galahd was the fact Lucians were not to kill anything in the islands without permission. Cor had squinted at it, but he’d found the same note over and over again, in documents reaching back some twelve hundred years.

So despite the fact the deer acted like ill-tempered tanks, Cor tried his best to avoid them.

Then he ran into the sheep, and more importantly the rams.

The rams that, well, rammed headfirst into a fully grown coeurl and punted it clear out of the clearing the moment they became aware of it. That was.

An experience.

Frankly at the point Cor got surrounded by a bunch of assholes who could warp, magic sweet and pungent in the air, he was less shocked and more resigned.

And then Ardyn showed up.


	18. Cor finds a new pastime

Nyx finds Cor perched on a fence, with a mug of beer and a bizarre expression on his face that takes him entirely too long to realize is a grin.

“What are you doing?” Nyx demands, squinting suspiciously, because anything that makes the Immortal grin like that has to be something terrible.

Cor turned to look at him, and his grin wilted for a moment, before it came back with a vengeance as he nodded down the short stairs to the table where Ardyn and Axis were busy bitching at each other. Nyx knew from experience it was a closed feedback loop: Ardyn bitched and Axis escalated, and vice versa, because they were both cranky stupid idiots who couldn’t  _let go_  of shit.

Nyx is so instantly horrified by the fact someone had the gross oversight to let this happen, again - the swath of forest from last time these two had been left alone to their own devices hasn’t finished growing back yet - that he almost misses Cor’s reply entirely:

“Enjoying performance art, clearly.”

Nyx does not stab him for that. He wants to, but he doesn’t. Because he’s a guest and of interest to the King.

But dear god, does he want to stab the asshole.


	19. ardyn doesn't entirely dislike pelna. mostly.

“Twist your wrist,” Ardyn says, with the look of someone who’s been debating speaking up for fifteen minutes before deciding his soul can’t take one more second witnessing someone fundamentally fucking up a simple process. 

“If I twist my wrist,” Pelna said, staring up at him patiently, “it’s going to snap.”

“Well, if you twist  _and pull_ , yes,” Ardyn snorts, and then his fingers twitch, like he hasn’t decided what to do with his hands, but clearly feeling like he has to do  _something_. “Just.  _Ugh_.”

Ardyn makes a disgusted noise, and it’s more like the concept of disgruntled disgust became a person just long enough to make a noise and that noise was  _ugh_.

Pelna arches his eyebrows, foot stil on the pedal and expression wry as Ardyn shoos him off his seat and swipes the coarse thread of wool off his hands. When he’s before the spinning wheel, however, a strange expression takes over Ardyn’s face, a mixture of fascination and remembrance and that lowkey patina of fury that never really leaves him, even when he’s laughing. Pelna has no idea what goes through his head and he figures he’ll live long and prosper so long as he’s not trying to find out.

“Just. Twist and then pull, two separate motions, not one,” Ardyn says, after the moment is over, and he’s once more arrogant and smug and a bloody obnoxious know-it-all.

The thread doesn’t snap, though. Pelna is smart enough to wait a few moments, just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, and then he swallows up his tirade, sitting down on a stool, elbows on his knees.

“Run that by me again,” and it’s not a question, but also not a command. It’s the kind of squinty request that gets passed around all the time.

Ardyn sighs loudly, shoulders slumping, like this is some great endeavor he must undertake purely for Pelna’s sake. Pelna feels the strangest urge to shove him for his trouble, but he refrains.

Because he likes the prospect of living a long, peaceful life, mostly.

“You have to stop being afraid of snapping the thread. It’s a lot sturdier than you think it is.”


	20. galahdian wildlife is fucking horrific. shocker.

The hares don’t like him, and Cor knows it. He avoids approaching the burrow too closely, when he’s looking for Prompto… because the hares  _love_ Prompto. This, Selena insisted, was normal. Not common, no, but normal. The hares are finicky like that, they like some people and not others, and they’re cute balls of fluff for those they like, and vicious feral balls of teeth and claws, to those they don’t.

Cor knows, he’s got the scars to prove it.

Selena says it’s good luck. Ardyn likes to snark that it’s young Prompto following in his father’s footsteps, building himself a Crownsguard of his own. (The hares, of course, like Ardyn too. Because of course they do.) Nyx just snickers at him, when they’ve lost track of Prompto and cursory search of the Seat proves the boy’s nowhere to be found, which invariably means he’s wandered off into the large field behind the seat and he can be found either playing with this year’s leverets or asleep in one of the dozens of grass nests built by the base of trees.

“You have a  _son_ ,” Regis says, somewhere between accusingly and hurt, as he trails after Cor, down the path towards the nesting grounds.

“It’s a long story,” Cor mutters snidely, because Regis and Clarus are in Galahd, and he’s still high on adrenaline after the three hour dance around required to convince Ardyn that killing them would mean playing into someone else’s game, and he’s still not entirely sure he’s convinced the King for good.

At least not until he’s done burning things and venting his rage about it.

“You’ll somehow find the way to make it short anyway,” Clarus snorts dryly, and Cor looks over his shoulder to shoot him an annoyed look which Clarus responds to by flaring his nostrils.

“Cor,” Regis sighs, almost placatingly, “what’s going on?”

“Lots of things,” Cor replies, swallowing hard. “Prompto has the uncanny ability to disappear when I most need to keep an eye on him, and I just purposefully pissed off Ardyn so he wouldn’t murder you and call it a day.”

He stops abruptly, and whistles.

The sentries stand up to attention, judging. The hares don’t like him, no, but they know him and they know he comes every now and then, to take Prompto away. Clarus makes a noise of surprise in the back of his throat, while Regis swallows hard, though, because  _the sentries stand up to attention_. And they’re hares. They’re 100% hares, fluffy, furry hares with long, straight ears and cute black eyes… and they’re also five feet tall, each, standing up on their back feet, like that.

Cor raises his arms, to keep Regis and Clarus from attacking, when the bullhead, as he likes to call it, the big, massive monster that’s nearly six feet tall when standing up, charges up at him, teeth bare and eyes no longer quite so cute. It stops less than three feet away from Cor, huffing and puffing and looking not too friendly, and from up close, they realize the hares have  _horns_. Curled back, black and sturdy, like a ram’s.

“Easy,” Cor says, though it’s not quite clear if he means Regis and Clarus, or the beast huffing and puffing like it can’t decide whether to charge at his face or aim a bite at his throat. “Easy, there. There’s no need-”

“Bullhead!” Prompto says, hands on his hips as he walks out the tall grass with all the severity of an ten year old. “Bad bunny!” He says reproachingly, poking at its side and shoving lightly. “Hi dad!”

He smiles at Cor, tooth gap and all.

Cor finds himself unable to not smile back.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, eyebrows arched, “ready to go home?”

Prompto nods and turns around, just in time to get nuzzled by the hare, head nearly as big as his entire torso. He laughs as he pets it and shoves it away.

“Bye Bullhead,” he says, “be good!”

The hare’s ears twitch, and it huffs threateningly at Cor and company one last time, before it turns on its side and hops away, the remaining sentries folding back down and disappearing in the tall grass.

“What the… what was that?” Clarus asks, voice strangled.

Prompto looks up at him, blinks and says, serenely:

“It’s okay,” he assures him, in a tone that makes Cor brace himself, “you can say fuck.”

“ _Cor_.”

Cor picks up his kid and sighs.

“Long. Story.”


	21. ardyn and wearing beads again

He knows he can’t lose them, of course, he bound each and every one of the to the armiger as soon as he got them. He didn’t have a problem with that concern, after all, when he dropped most of them on Libertus’ head to prove a point. He knew all he needed was a twitch of his will to send them back into the void, safe and sound with the rest.

So he’s somewhat bewildered by the strange anxiety eating at his nerves as he dips his hands into the bowl, feeling the pulse of ancient magic in each bead. It has been very long, now, since he last allowed himself the time to do this, because it has been very long now, since he’d allowed himself to think of himself as Galahdian. To bask in the knowledge and his covenant.

Once, a long time ago, before he was master of himself and the madness inside himself - you cannot master madness, he’s found, but you can carve out spaces for it, account for the howling, screaming anger and let yourself go at selectively chosen times - he’d cut off the braids in a fit of rage. He’d thought,  _I’d wear them all or none at all_ , and not felt silly about the implications behind that.

He could wear them all, if he wanted to.

He could also wear none.

He sifts them through his fingers, over and over again, feeling out for the oldest sparks, the chipped set that had hung from his hair the day the Crystal deemed him unworthy of his rightful place. It hadn’t destroyed them, but it had left cracks in them, from the shockwave of light trying to purge him from the world.

He fingers the set, and takes only one out of six, placing it out of the bowl and onto the soft sheets by his side. He digs his fingers into the bowl again, trying not to remember too much, about the storms he’s gone through, looking for the newer set, the ones that had made Nyx stare at him like he couldn’t quite make up his mind about what to think. He takes one of those, smooth and shiny and new.

He dips his fingers into the contents of the bowl once more, just for the feeling of beads shifting around his skin, moving to give him space, before he vanishes it back into the armiger, to where it’ll be safe and sound and not able to make his head hurt.

He weaves the braids on the left side, coming down the nape of his neck. They’re mostly hidden by the rest of his hair, and he’s fine with that. This is not about who might see them and what they might think about it.

It’s not.

He reckons it won’t take too long for him to believe that.


	22. Ardyn & Cor, and Prompto

Cor wakes up with the tell-tale feeling of Ardyn’s inhuman stare crawling up his spine. Ordinarily - and oh, there are things to be said, about the fact any of it has become ordinary, and none of them are the kind to be said while sober - that merits pulling a sword out of Regis’ armiger and stabbing the creepy, smug son of a bitch until he stops. Ardyn reacts to two things, in Cor’s experience: existential boredom, which sort of comes with the territory of being an immortal bag of ennui and stale memes, and attempts, however futile or half-hearted to end his inexistence. The first usually causes a disaster, since a bored Ardyn is always a prelude for things going terribly wrong for someone, sometimes something, and near always fire of some kind is involved.

The second tends to result in sulking.

A sulking Ardyn is better than a bored one, by a mile, at least. If he’s busy sulking - and oh, sulking is a production, when Ardyn is involved - at least he’s not murdering someone, primarily Cor, over whatever ridiculous idea he’s got stuck in his head in a fit of boredom.

So Cor considers pulling his sword out of void and crystals and sticking it right into Ardyn’s smug face. He’s got a talent for it, these days, and he’s gotten bizarrely used to the strange texture of bone and then brain matter trying to resist the advance of a blade. Face stabbing is inefficient and actually sort of hard to do, and he never really had a taste for it, before coming to Galahd and meeting its King. But now, he’d dare say he’s an expert in the art. He’s single-handedly elevated it into an artform, really.

He doesn’t, though. He wants to - he wants to hear that crack of bone shattering and then splintering back together like nothing’s happened at all - but he doesn’t.

Mostly because he’s got ten pounds of small child buried under his shirt and experience has taught him that it’s a little bit unwieldy to fight with. At least Prompto’s still asleep, Cor reckons, which is not really saying much, since Prompto is approximately old enough to sleep all day and not do much else. He’s a fussy little thing, though, clingy and loud when he’s not blissfully passed out, though Cor’s figured out a few tricks to keep him happy, chief among them, letting the pocket-sized menace cling to his person so long as his tiny heart desires.

“You were meant to kill him too, you realise,” Ardyn says, standing by the edge of the hammock - this is why Cor likes the hammocks so much, beyond excellent back support, you can’t really slide into someone’s hammock without them noticing, quite like you can with a bed, and that’s a crucial bright side, when Ardyn is around - and frowning down at him with golden-brown eyes that glow mutely in the late evening light.

Cor stares up at the King long and hard and then snorts, sitting up slowly, letting Prompto slide down his chest, under his shirt, until he’s curled up in his lap, tiny hands clinging intently to the soft fabric of his shirt.

“I don’t kill babies for Regis,” Cor says, blunt and fearless and stupid, as always, because deep in his bones he knows Ardyn is going to kill him one day, and he still haven’t found a reason to pretend otherwise. “What makes you think I’d kill them for you?”

Ardyn smiles. Cor hates how human that smile really is. How… fangless. Teethless. It’s an amused little tilt of lips. The kind that invites one to figure out what’s going on.

“Well, now you’ll just have to find out, won’t you?”


	23. Cor vs Local Fauna...

“Really?” Cor asked, in the vague offended tones of one too tired to muster the effort to give a shit. “I mean, really, now.”

The goat, which happened to be the size of a modest car, bleated mightily at him, as if complaining about his lack of enthusiasm about the proceedings, and went on licking his hands, which were now empty, because the chocolate bar he’d been intending to eat was now lost to the depths of the goat’s gut, wrapper and all.

The goat, which Cor affectionately called The Asshole, bleated balefully, once it realized it was licking Cor’s fingers instead, and then tucked it’s head against Cor’s neck, puffing air noisily through its nostrils.

“I hope a coeurl eats you,” Cor said, and only mostly meant it, even when The Asshole decided instead to press its snout between his knees and casually throw him onto its back.

Cor flailed somewhat gracelessly into his knew mount, ended up back against back the Galahdian equivalent of a bulletproof milk tank, and glared dispassionately at the sky. On the one hand, he was sure no one expected him to succeed on this errand, not even himself. This was a distraction because Ardyn wanted him out of the Seat for a few weeks so he could do evil nefarious things, or so he sought to convince Cor of. Cor was pretty sure it was probably some religion thing that Ardyn was embarrassed to let him see. Because that was the kind of nonsensical stupidity that characterized everything Ardyn did or say.

On the other hand, annoying Nyx because he did complete the errand would invariably amuse Ardyn, and also Cor himself. And Cor just hated losing, over all.

It wouldn’t be so bad, Cor thought, leading a herd into their birthing grounds. It would be  _fine_.

Except for the bit where Cor thought this, all of this, staring at the sky while lying on the ample, cushioned back of a woolly goat the size of a truck, just as the proverbial coeurl out to eat it came out of the woodwork and became more literal than rhetorical.

Cor had seen rams - goats, really, but he’d thought them rams - punt coeurls before, yes.

Just never from quite so up close.

“I hate you,” he muttered, when The Asshole trotted up to lick his face and bleat loudly at him, where he was left hanging off a tree’s thick foliage.

Regis wasn’t paying him enough for this shit.


	24. When Prompto met the Hares

Prompto is nine, the first time he runs away from home. It’s really the only time he runs away - subsequent times, he’ll know for sure he can go home, but right now, right now he wants to go on and never look back, and his heart is broken, split right in the middle like ripe squash, and he’s tired of crying but not tired of running, not yet.

Well, he is, but he’s an upset child engaged in the all important multi-tasking endeavor of crying and running at the same time, and it’s a universal constant that the only thing that can stop that, is a fall. Which is exactly what happens as soon as he leaves the road and heads for the field - away from the forest, which is thick and dark and scary and also full of things that will eat him - and finds himself falling face first into the thick grass.

Prompto goes quiet, lying on the floor, tiny hiccups shaking his frame, and then terrified and silent, when the grass starts rustling and he remembers all the things that also could be hiding in the grass and also about to eat him whole.

Instead a hare comes out, tiny hops and twitchy nose first, parting the grass that is taller than Prompto, bead-like black eyes searching for the source of the ruckus, which is the boy currently sitting on the ground with scraped knees and eyes swollen to the side of baseballs. Prompto stares at the hare, breathing held in suspense, and then breaks down crying again when it hops closer, ears flicking around as it investigates. The hare is taller than he is - then again, everything and everyone is taller than he is - but the fur is soft and it doesn’t bite him when he reaches out to touch, which is the universal sign, in Galahd, that he’s probably going to survive the encounter.

He ends up in a nest, carried by the scout and passed along to the broodmothers, and his entire heartbreak forgotten because there’s  _babies_ and he gets to pet them and their mommas and not get bitten for his trouble.

“You’re entirely more trouble than you’re worth, aren’t you,” the King says, when he finds him, hours later, when the sky is getting darker and not even soft, cuddly baby hares are enough to make him forget the fact he’s hungry and tired and his knees hurt. 

Prompto stares up at him, eyes wide open, and says, with the soulless voice of an exhausted child: “I hate you.”

Ardyn laughs.

Because, and this will take Prompto decades to get over, Ardyn  _always_  laughs.

“You’re not the first one, my dear,” Ardyn says, and then bend downs to pick him up, so Prompto goes gooey like when Nyx tries to pick him up and he doesn’t want to go, except Ardyn is apparently really good at handling gooey substances far more hazardous than a nine-year-old boy trying to keep a sustained tantrum going, because he sits him on the crook of his arm like it’s nothing at all. “And in all likelihood, you shan’t be last.”

 


	25. Ardyn, when pressed, gravely admits to having two cats - a lion and a coeurl.

He didn’t love them, of course.

He owned them.

It was quite the significant difference, that. Ardyn knew his life as it was, now, hinged on quite a few significant differences, and different significances to go along with them. But he couldn’t afford to linger on it too much: the Storm raging overhead, the lightning crawling under his skin, they propelled him forward, without giving him much of a chance to really think about it.

It was for the best, really, Ardyn reckoned, leaning on the balcony railing and watching Cor and Nyx spar in the courtyard several floors below. A more nuanced, thoughtful review of the state of the world might just be enough to convince him to start running and never really stop. Or perhaps drop himself into the sea and sink all the way to the blissful quiet of the depths. Leviathan would protest that, of course, but Ardyn reckons it can’t be worse than the eminent shithead painting the skies above Galahd as some sort of divine craft therapy.

And still, though he could leave – he could, if he wanted to: gods and scourge and all could not contain him, before, and he has not been changed enough to change that – he doesn’t want to. He enjoyed the precarious balance he walked every day, the thrill of ownership after so long being denied it.

But he didn’t love them, the two stubborn, feral idiots trying their honest best to massacre themselves in the courtyard below. He didn’t love Nyx’s unrepentant questioning and relentless demands. He didn’t love Cor’s choking loyalty and his scandalously unblemished honor. He didn’t love that they stayed and returned and never really meant it when they threatened to relent.

He didn’t.

He _didn’t_.

…but even if it did, it didn’t matter.


	26. Prompto visiting mainland Lucis...

“They’re so tiny!” Prompto exclaimed, nearly falling through the Regalia’s window as he reached out to take a picture of the pack of sahagin by the borders of the lake. “Mini-sahagin! Shit, do you think I could keep one? As a pet?”

He looked back inside the car and found his audience staring, as they were prone to – such bad manners, these Lucians.

“Tiny,” Ignis muttered, blank stare going right through Prompto and echoing into the horrors he was imagining.

Prompto didn’t really feel sorry for him, all things considered. Nothing Ignis imagined would come close to the Cantankerous, if sahigin that small were all he had to start with. Though Prompto wondered if it’d be bad of him to tell him about it. Ignis struck Prompto as the sort of person who might never sleep at night again, if he knew about the reasons why Galahdians didn’t venture out into the sea that often. Particularly, when he might have to think about what had shared the water with their boat.

“Mini-sahagin,” Gladio deadpanned, looking down at Prompto like he always did: like he couldn’t decide if Prompto was fucking with him – he wasn’t, mostly, that’d be rude – or not.

“Pet?” Noctis said, head tilting slowly to the side. He squinted. “Don’t you already have a coeurl?”

Prompto laughed.

“Hahaha, nah! Nothing Galahdian would be happy as a pet,” he explained, “but I figured some cute critter you guys have in the mainland might be up for it! Should we go ask if the mini-sahagin want a hug?”

“No!”


	27. Meeting the in-laws!

“Why are you here?” Ardyn asks, when he wakes so early it’s still night, and finds himself running into her during his routine ghost-walk around the Seat.

Aurora Ulric blinks at him, and then smiles. It’s Nyx’s smile, only aged and well spiced, like the mulled wine they serve in the main hall, when a storm lasts more than four days. Ardyn ponders what it means, what he’ll reply to anything she says, and wonders why he cares at all – but doesn’t try to deny he does. He’s tired, bone-deep, as deep as the ink and the lightning reaches into his bones, and this is a battle he doesn’t have it in himself to fight.

“My husbands are dead,” Aurora says, head tilted to the side, “and now my children have chosen their trade. I didn’t have anything, keeping me home anymore, I figure at least here I can vividly remind them I’m awaiting grandchildren.”

Ardyn barks a laugh almost entirely against his will, and her smile – sweet and warm, mulled-wine gulp swishing in the back of one’s throat, all the way down – widens as he does.

“I may be capable of many, many amazing, awe-inspiring feats,” he says, hands sunk into the pockets of his coat, not quite slouching forward as he does, “but I’m fairly sure that’s one I don’t think I have it in me.”

Aurora laughs, and with the same careless trust that her son touches him, reaches out to pat his chest.

“I was thinking about Selena, myself,” she says, and moves on to brush lint off his shoulders with a mischievous smile as he splutters. “But it’s sweet of you to worry about that, Your Majesty.”

And for the first time in far too many centuries to count, Ardyn feels his face heat up with something almost, not quite like embarrassment.

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out on [DW](https://notavodkashot.dreamwidth.org/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/notavodkashot), if you'd like.


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